X-Message-Number: 20141
From: "mike99" <>
Subject: God talk...again (was Re: CryoNet #20116 - #20124)
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 19:22:29 -0600

 (d) wrote:
<< >LaTorra<<What this all comes down to, in my opinion, is that mystical
experiences can be induced technologically. While this does not disprove the
independent existence of a deity (that's a different philosophical problem),
it brings into question millennia of reports from "god-experiencers" about
what they were "told" to  reveal to the rest of us.>>

>d:  do synthetic rubies bring into question the existence of "natural"
>rubies?

Mark Plus:  Bad analogy. No one disputes the existence of rubies.

d:  the number of disputants on either side of an argument is irrelevant to
the validity of either side of the argument.  you misunderstand the nature
of
analogy.

LATORRA: On the contrary, Mark is correct. I was prepared to make the very
same point in response to your analogy until I saw that Mark beat me to it.
He was **not** implying that this is a vote in which the majority rules.
Rather, the claim is, in your analogy, that we can easily produce physical
evidence of both natural and synthetic rubies. Can you produce
incontrovertible evidence of the existence of God? Many people dispute the
claim that God exists, because there is neither tangible (empirical)
evidence nor logical (analytical) proofs that have persuaded anyone who did
not already want to believe.

......
Mark Plus:  I happen to find all this talk of "mystical" & "spiritual"
experiences
baffling. I have no clue what such people are mouthing off about.

d:  find out.
............

LATORRA: What do you mean by "find out"? Meditate? Pray? Take psychedelics?
Use a "brain machine" to induce mystical experiences? One could do some or
all of that. I certainly have. But these experiences prove nothing...except
that homo sapiens are capable of having such experiences. The experiences
certainly don't prove the existence of God, an afterlife, or anything else
that some people interpret them to mean. In other words, the meaning is
added to the experience by the experiencer. The experiences themselves are
just whatever they are: bliss, love, union with something greater, etc.
Heck, even many so-called spiritual masters (e.g., Adi Da) warn their
followers not to get attached to these experiences. If they don't idolize
these subjective states, then why should we?


Michael LaTorra




Member:
Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org
World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org
Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org
Society for Technical Communication: www.stc.org

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